1994

                The saying goes that the best year for pop music is when you were 14 years old.  This makes a lot of sense to me, at least insofar as the year you start really caring about music will be your point of reference going forward, with you hearing either how earlier stuff led to that point or how later stuff followed from it.  You could pick any year you want and do this, but you’re likely to stick with the first year you started paying attention.  So by that measure, virtually all of my readership should think that 1993, 1994, or 1995 is that peak.  On the other hand, though, there’s a case to be made that the ’93-’95 period really was one of the great periods in rock music, up there with ’68-’72 and ’78-’82, when in the aftermath of a major innovation, a whole mess of different kinds of music actually got both made and played on the radio.  Certainly ’94 is a very good year, with a lot of good stuff following from (in the US) grunge and (in the UK) Britpop breaking through.  Alt-rock is probably better than Brit-pop, though, if only because it was more open to a freewheeling eclecticism than the more formalized genre rules of Britpop.

                If there’s evidence that ’94 is actually great, and not just a product of my nostalgia, I’d point toward the UK stuff, which for the most part I wasn’t listening to at all at the time.  After getting started in a big way last year, Britpop really hits its stride here.  Parklife is probably Blur’s strongest album (and certainly their strongest Britpop album), covering an impressive range of styles that all hang together both through solid songwriting & playing and because of a through-line of “Englishness” in their genres.  So something like a concept album about British music, esp. of the Kinks-y version, but also the various strands of punk, New Wave, and British post-punk.  Unsurprising how an album like this could form the core of a movement in music, as it shows all the different ways you could take the “Britpop” approach.

                There will be a bigger flurry of bands taking these various approaches later on, but we get a couple of them this year.  Pulp continue their previous year’s EP’s path of glammy, synthy rock with Ray Davies-style lyrics on top, & Elastica drop their first single indicating their electro-New Wave style, but the biggest news in Britpop other than Parklife is the debut of Oasis, giving Blur a proper foil.  Suede were too obviously an inferior version of Pulp with more commercial appeal, but Oasis offer a real and compelling alternate vision of Britpop.  They get tagged as Beatles-wannabes, but that’s not really accurate.  First of all, they sound more like Led Zeppelin covering T. Rex if you want to make classic rock comparisons.  But secondly, and more importantly, what they really sound like is a mix of the classicist songwriting and heavy beats of the Stone Roses with (a less proggy version of) the swirly guitar sonics of My Bloody Valentine; so in a way more modern-sounding than the self-consciously retro Blur.  Although Noel Gallagher isn’t as original as any of those influences listed above, he does have a better sense of melody than any of them other than the Beatles. 

                I mentioned both the Stone Roses and Led Zeppelin as influences on Oasis, so perhaps it’s appropriate that this is the year the Roses finally get around to releasing their second album, which sounds a whole lot like Led Zeppelin with more contemporary dance beats added (on at least some tracks).  A disappointment to those who loved the first album, maybe, but they sound like worthy peers of Oasis this year.  If the Roses sound like 70s revivalists this year, so too do Primal Scream, though they’re more a straight revival act (i.e. no nods to contemporary sounds, dance or otherwise) and their muse is the Rolling Stones circa Black & Blue, when they were interested in exploring funk but not so interested in writing memorable tunes. 

                Older acts also adapt well to the rise of Britpop.  Elvis Costello times the release of one of his periodic return-to-classic-form records well to play alongside his spiritual descendents, while Mick Jones’s new version of Big Audio (now with no Dynamite) also looks backward to his pre-dance past, when he wrote pop songs, and therefore also fits in well with the new crop of UK bands, even if Jones’s tunes, “Harrow Road” excepted, are far from especially memorable.  Solidly returning to form (and classic sound), though is Shane MacGowan, who remarkably puts out his most folk-influenced LP since Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash; his voice is shot to hell, but his songs are good.  Not a great fit in the current Britpop landscape, though, which is much more mannered (Oasis excepted) and less folk-influenced than MacGowan or the Pogues.  We even get a couple of prog bands, with King Crimson (sounding like a hard-rock Talking Heads) and Pink Floyd, who release their 2^nd post-Waters LP, The Division Bell.  You’d think that a band like Floyd would sound entirely out of place in the current musical landscape, but remarkably, the beginnings of Radiohead’s shift into prog mean that Floyd actually sound like an influence for the first time in years.  Not that Radiohead’s shift should be overstated, though; they’re still mostly a second-tier grunge band (esp. on the first of their two EPs this year), but on “My Iron Lung,” their grunge-prog sound first really suggests the greatness they’ll start reaching next year.

                Back in the States, meanwhile, we’re reaching the end of the real grunge era, as the original grunge bands put out either their last albums in a real “grunge” style or (sadly) their last albums at all.  Still really good stuff this year, though.  Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both put out their best albums in ’94.  Soundgarden don’t really change their basic sound, but do tighten up their songwriting, improving on Badmotorfinger while keeping its strengths.  Pearl Jam, meanwhile, double down on the experimentation and strip out the last of the funk from last year, ending up sounding something like a Hüsker Dü-Fall hybrid.  Pretty far from the Aerosmith-recalling sound of Ten, but a remarkably daring album for the biggest band in the world to release.  Also, hands-down (to my ears) Pearl Jam’s peak as a hard-rockin’ band, since before and after this, the ballads would be their strong suite. 

                If Pearl Jam are at their most rocking, it’s somewhat contrary that the other major grunge bands to put out albums this year are shifting to a more folk-rock sound.  Alice In Chains don’t go all the way acoustic, but they definitely are expanding their sonic palette and playing a bit softer this year.  More surprising still, though, is Nirvana’s Unplugged.  By their own description, Nirvana wanted to avoid simply playing their electric hits on acoustic guitars, so instead rearrange that material of theirs they play and otherwise show off their range of influences on a remarkable set of acoustic material.  It’s hard to say whether this was a bold new (potentially Automatic for the People-influenced) direction, or, like for Alice in Chains, a one-off and the beginning of a more subtle shift in Cobain’s songwriting.  Regardless, the album shows off both the quality of Cobain’s songwriting (even stripping away the electric guitar attack) and of Cobain’s singing voice (especially on “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”),  and serves as an unintentional requiem for one of the most talented artists of his generation.

                Neil Young, meanwhile, puts out a very intentional requiem for Cobain on his Sleeps With Angels, probably his strongest album since Rust Never Sleeps, and the one that most explicitly declares his kinship with the grunge-rockers.  Even more than the punks, Young’s ragged guitar attack fits perfectly alongside the grunge acts, and the experimentation of Pearl Jan and the acoustic moves of Nirvana and Alice in Chains shows that Young’s other aspects also fit well among them.  And this year he writes a song-cycle that both plays to those similarities and contains his best songwriting and playing in a long time.

                While the original Seattle grunge acts are moving away from the grunge sound, a wave of neo-grunge bands are already starting to appear.  First (and best) of these bands are the Stone Temple Pilots, who I neglected to mention in ’92 because itunes misdated them, but are much better this year than then anyway.  In ’92 they were transparently Pearl Jam followers, with just a touch of glam metal thrown in.  This year they really start to develop their own unique variant on the grunge sound (slightly more glam and classic-rock influenced than the others, even Pearl Jam), and Scott Weiland starts trying to sound like himself, rather than Eddie Vedder.  But if STP are beginning to show their worth as more than just grunge followers, there are still plenty of bands like Candlebox out there content to simply ape the grunge sound without adding any particular innovation of their own.

                It’s because of these dour neo-grunge bands in part that Weezer’s debut was as impressive as it was.  Basically Weezer combine the sound of the early ‘90s (distorted guitars, pounding drums) with the more upbeat sentiment of New Wave, or more accurately Cheap Trick.  Basically a hard power-pop band, then, but a lot more fun-loving than anything the grunge or neo-grunge acts have to offer.

                The rest of alt-rock isn’t half as dour as grunge, though, and is really starting to expand in a whole mess of directions.  If one of the big stories in US alt-rock is the stylistic development of the grunge acts, undoubtedly the other one is the explosion of California-style pop-punk.  This owes a lot to Bad Religion, who have their biggest hit this year mostly due to timing (Stranger Than Fiction is solid, but a step down from Recipe for Hate, and lifted by virtue of the bands BR influenced getting a ton of radioplay).  The big news commercially, though, is the sudden commercial viability of a bunch of Cali punk bands seemingly out of nowhere.  I suppose it follows from all the grunge bands talking about how they think of themselves as punk bands, even if that’s far more in attitude than music, where even Nirvana didn’t particularly recall punk rock.  It was only a matter of time before people who loved the grunge bands started seeking out the punk bands, and punk of the NoFX-Green Day school was probably much more likely to break through than the dour grunge sounds, being both unabashedly catchy and far more fun-loving than most of the grungies.  These new Cali bands have far less interest in punk’s audience-bating and deliberate abrasiveness than the likes of the Sex Pistols, certainly.  Some, like Green Day, seem like genuine punks who found their sound suddenly had commercial appeal, while others, like the Offspring, in retrospect sound a bit more mercenary or opportunistic.  Of course, there are still bands making good punk music somewhat below the radar, though both the Bosstones and Rancid score minor MTV hits this year, with “Kinder Words” and “Salvation,” respectively.  They both are a bit more sonically abrasive than those acts that do break through, though.

                Elsewhere, there’s a whole mess more alt-rock that’s less easy to categorize or frame in discussion.  One thing I will say is that it becomes pretty clear that the alt-rock/indie rock distinction people make about this period is pretty post hoc in its reasoning.  Indie darlings Pavement, for instance, score a minor hit and don’t sound any further out of the mainstream than, say, Phish, who also sound as alt-rock-radio friendly as they ever will this year.  Neither, though, is as sonically out there as, say Cake or Pearl Jam in ’94, so while there is some good stuff from what will later be called indie-rock, there isn’t really any evidence to divide the “indie” bands from the “alt-rock” bands except that the indie bands were those bands that were less commercially lucky and the alt bands more commercially lucky. 

                And, of course, some of the bands from 80s alt/indie (before people even pretend there was a divide) are still very much active.  Both Sugar and Sonic Youth keep in the same vein as their earlier work, with Sugar sounding much more radio-friendly than the more abrasive Sonic Youth.  Frank Black is also close to his classic Pixies style, though considerably mellower as a solo act.  Much more interesting than any of these, though, are R.E.M., who make a big distorted-guitar-heavy glam rock album.  Mistaken for a grunge record at the time (and understandably so), it’s really a superior return to the Green sound.  Really, they fit well alongside Oasis, who are also making a big, guitar-heavy glam record, and like Definitely Maybe, some people hated Monster for being big “dumb” fun, which misses how hard it is to pull that style & swagger off convincingly.

                Of course, this means that R.E.M. have abandoned folk-rock, at least for now, but a host of bands are picking up that baton as well.  Jeff Buckley is probably the most celebrated these days, and not undeservedly, though he sounds more influenced by the 70s folk-rockers (like his dad) than by R.E.M. or the 80s/90s folk rock.  Sounding more contemporary are Toad The Wet Sprocket, who sound like a mix of late-era Replacements and Paul Westerberg.  They sound appropriate alongside the likes of the Goo Goo Dolls and Gin Blossoms, bands that I don’t have in my collection but I remember dominating the airwaves.  On the more hippie end of things, while Phish are sounding more conventionally alt-rocking this year, we get Rusted Root, who sound vaguely like the late-era Talking Heads in their world-beat rocking.  But the best folk-rock album of the year (apart from Grace) is probably Tom Petty’s.  What Petty and Buckley remember that the others generally overlook is the rock half of folk-rock, including a bit of electric crunch amid all the soft strumming (acoustic and otherwise).

                But the best part of 1994 & alt-rock isn’t the late-era evolution of grunge, the explosion of pop-punk, or the 70s revival shifting toward folk-rock, it’s what I tend to think of as the WTF bin.  It was a great era for all sorts of bands that seemingly make no sense getting anything like radioplay, but sneaking in the gaps as the majors blindly cast about for the next big sound.  Eventually they’d decide (incorrectly as it turns out) that that would be electronica, and we do get Daft Punk’s first single this year.   But before we reached that point, all sorts of weird stuff got on the radio.  Nine Inch Nails somehow manage to make Big Black-style industrial rock pop (by adding songs & hooks), and still get a mess of radio-play with a seemingly anti-radio chorus on “Closer.”  You know the one I mean.  Hell, Ween had a minor hit (with “Voodoo Lady”), which is pretty remarkable for a group with such a prominent Zappa influence.  You also get hints of the soon-to-be-faddishly popular lounge-revival, with the likes of Stereolab and Pizzicato Five offering a modern spin on what’s basically 40’s-style pop songs (and also showing a bit of a Style Council influence, though both are better at these non-rock styles than the Style Council, who were only ever really good when they were closest to sounding like a trad soul band).

                You also get bands mixing elements of hip-hop into their post-grunge alt-rock, most notably Beck and Soul Coughing.  Soul Coughing sound more jazz- and spoken-word-inflected, but still ride an impressive groove.  Beck, meanwhile, has an appealing junk-shop mash-up of grunge-rock and hip-hop on Mellow Gold, which lacked the wall-to-wall hits of some of his later ones, but is perhaps his most captivatingly original set of material.  His other album, though, the dire “anti-folk” of One Foot In The Grave is a prime example of the early 90s’ chief sonic sin: lo-fi.  Low fidelity is fine if it’s a matter of necessity, if you’re too poor to afford proper recording equipment.  And yes, the lo-fi crackle of, say, Robert Johnson is part of the charm, but only because it’s genuine.  Adding it as artifice just sounds phony.  While I get lo-fi as a reaction to the overproduction of the 80s, it’s irritating in exaxtly the same way: the production overwhelms the songs.  For Beck (as for Sebadoh) this means that it’s impossible to separate the actual quality songs from the just-screwing-around junk.  Which may be the point, but causes me to basically reject One Foot In The Grave entirely.  Similarly wasting their time on lo-fi, but without much evidence of great songs underneath the overwhelming underproduction are Sublime, who fall down hard on their second album.  Robbin’ The Hood sounds basically like what it is: a bunch of guys high on hard drugs goofing around with a 4-track. 

                While Beck, Soul Coughing, and Sublime are all messing around with elements of hip-hop, the Beastie Boys actually straddle the line between the two worlds.  Largely a continuation and expansion of the  path they started down on Check Your Head, Ill Communication basically goes further in all directions.  The Beasties remember that they used to be a punk band, and both include some hardcore cuts and the rap-rocking glory of “Sabotage,” hands-down the best rap-rock fusion of them all (not that there’s much competition apart from Rage and maybe Blakroc).  They go deeper into their Curtis Mayfield-inspired mellow funk instrumentals.  But predominantly they sound like a post-Native Tongues alternative hip-hop act, much like a new crop of hip-hop that’s starting to appear.

                It’s ironic that Common releases his first great song (“I Used To Love H.E.R.”) mourning the death of hip-hop just as my favorite phase in hip-hop gets started.  The Roots debuted last year, this year Blackalicious put out their first EP, and (not that they’re quite the same sub-genre) Outkast release their debut.  This late-90s hip-hop is my favorite kind of hip-hop perhaps just because it was what was out there when I first started getting into hip-hop (as per my introduction thesis), but also because it’s got fantastic beats and rhymes, highly indebted to Native Tongues, but better in every regard.

                Oh, and speaking of “hip-hop,” Vanilla Ice has reinvented himself as a hardcore Cyprus Hill-style weed-rapper.  Hearing him rap about how he “needs to get some spices/so I can get nices” is worth doing whatever you need to do to track down his absurd comeback single.

Song of the Year:  Soundgarden – “Black Hole Sun.”  My favorite song that summer, and still a fantastic example of how grunge started pushing its boundaries this year (just before the original grunge bands (even STP) would abandon the sound and leave it for the likes of (ugh) Creed and (sigh) Nickelback.

Album of the Year:  Pearl Jam – Vitalogy.  See above.  A moment when Pearl Jam sounded like they’d be a Beatlesesque kind of biggest band in the world, relentlessly pushing boundaries and throwing weird experimentation on platinum-selling records (also not touring).  Instead they became the 90s Grateful Dead, relentlessly touring and putting out albums that are basically variations on a theme and no longer the main event.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Alice in Chains.  I’d forgotten that Alice in Chains were so willing to vary their sonic template, since those bands that they influenced seemingly only had Dirt in their Alice in Chains collection.  But they were as willing to evolve and move forward as any of the grunge bands.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  NoFX.  The same basic sonic template as Green Day, but more irritating.  And not in Sex Pistols, deliberately-pushing-boundaries kind of way, but in a snotty teenager kind of way.  So a dog-whistle band of sorts, appealing to teenagers, obnoxious later on.  Good lord, I feel old typing that.

Album List

Aerosmith - Big Ones

Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies

Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction

Beck - Mellow Gold

Beck - One Foot In The Grave

Big Audio Dynamite - Higher Power

Big Audio Dynamite - Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

Blackalicious - Melodica

Blur - Parklife

Blur - Parklife B-Sides

Blur - The Best Of

Bob Dylan - Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Charlatans UK - Melting Pot

Common - Thisisme Then: The Best Of Common

Cornershop - Hold On It Hurts

Cracker - Misc.

Daft Punk - Musique Vol 1

Dinosaur Jr. - Beat The Retreat: Songs By Richard Thompson

Dinosaur Jr. - Ear-Bleeding Country: Best Of Dinosaur Jr

Dio - The Very Beast Of Dio

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Elliott Smith - Misc.

Elvis Costello - Extreme Honey: The Very Best Of The Warner Bros. Years

Frank Black - Teenager Of The Year

Green Day - Dookie

Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand

Jeff Buckley - Grace

King Crimson - In The Studio 1995-2003

King Crimson - Live 1994-2003

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Martin Carthy & Maddy Prior - Beat The Retreat: Songs By Richard Thompson

Matthew Sweet - Son Of Altered Beast

Meat Puppets - Too High To Die

Megadeth - Greatest Hits: Back To The Start (Digital Only)

Morphine - Yes

Morrissey - The Best Of Morrissey

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

Neil Young - Sleeps With Angels

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York

NoFX - Punk in Drublic

Oasis - B-Sides

Oasis - Definitely Maybe

Oasis - Misc.

Oasis - The Masterplan

Old 97's - Hit By A Train: The Best Of Old 97's

Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

Paul Weller - Modern Classics

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pearl Jam - Vitalogy

Phish - Hoist

Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Pizzicato Five - Made In USA

Primal Scream - Give Out But Don't Give Up

Pulp - His 'N' Hers

R.E.M. - Monster

Radiohead - BBC Radio One Session - 14 September 1994

Radiohead - Itch EP

Radiohead - My Iron Lung [EP] [UK]

Rancid - Let's Go!

Richard Thompson - Action Packed: The Best Of The Capitol Years

Rusted Root - When I Woke

Screaming Trees - Ocean Of Confusion - Songs Of Screaming Trees 1990-1996

Shane MacGowan - The Snake

Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples: Greatest Hits

Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star

Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom

Soundgarden - A-Sides

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Stereolab - Serene Velocity - A Stereolab Anthology

Stone Temple Pilots - Thank You

Sublime - Robbin' The Hood

Sugar - Besides

Sugar - File Under Easy Listening

The Beastie Boys - Ill Communication

The Beastie Boys - The Sounds Of Science

The Cranberries - The Best Of The Cranberries 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Flaming Lips - Due To High Expectations...The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles For Your Balloons

The Flaming Lips - She Don't Use Jelly (Single)

The Flaming Lips - The Fearless Freaks

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

The Mekons - I Have Been to Heaven and Back..., Vol. 1

The Mekons - Retreat From Memphis

The Mekons - Where Were You?

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Question The Answers

The Notorious B.I.G. - Notorious

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks

The Stone Roses - Second Coming

Toad The Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Girl on LSD

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Wildflowers

V/A - Children Of Nuggets II

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - DGC Rarities, Vol. 1

V/A - Trainspotting

Ween - Chocolate And Cheese

Weezer - Dusty Gems And Raw Nuggets [Bonus Disc]

Weezer - Wedding Songs

Weezer - Weezer

Wire - Misc.

X - Beyond & Back: The X Anthology